


206 Bones

by Tyranno



Series: but I wore his jacket for the longest time. [2]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: ADHD Noah Czerny, Background Joseph Kavinsky/Adam Parrish, Gangsey as family, Gen, Missing Scene, Ronan Lynch Has Feelings, Ronan Lynch has a really very terrible night, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:01:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22971433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyranno/pseuds/Tyranno
Summary: Ronan flinched, “Don’t say that.”“What?”“Corpse,” Ronan frowned, “It’s a terrible word.”Noah tilted his head. Ronan could see the road slip past, through the edges of his translucent body. Noah said, “It doesn’t bother me.”-On a cold Henrietta night, Ronan lynch exhumes and then re-inters a very old friend.
Relationships: Noah Czerny & Ronan Lynch
Series: but I wore his jacket for the longest time. [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1646647
Comments: 7
Kudos: 55





	206 Bones

**Author's Note:**

> A Missing scene from Mercury Dime, between Chapter 8 and Chapter 9. Ronan has to move Noah's body quickly because the ley line is going crazy. 
> 
> Technically this doesn't break my theme of coin mints for titles, because "bones" used to be slang for coins :P
> 
> *

> “Death has not been born yet, it is asleep on a pink beach.”

— Alfonsina Storni, tr. by David Masse, from Mask & Clover; “ _Birdsong,”_

* * *

Ronan woke up when something cold touched his forehead.

He peeled his eyes open. His room was dark and still, Chainsaw slept nestled to his chin, her feathers soft and silky. When he lifted his head, Chainsaw chirruped irritatedly and skittered across the covers. Moonlight made the room blue.

Noah sat at his bedside, so still that Ronan mistook him for furniture for a moment. It made Ronan’s heart lurch when he noticed.

“What the hell, Noah?” Ronan asked, heart thumping.

“I need your help,” Noah said, “and you have to promise not to freak out.”

“What’s wrong?” Ronan said up, pushing his covers off, “Are you alright?”

Noah gave him a cryptic grin, “Well, that’s a difficult question to answer.”

“Tell me what’s happening,” Ronan insisted.

Noah breathed out softly. He had a placid expression that reminded Ronan of a mirrorlike lake. He closed his eyes for a long moment, and seemed to fade into the background a little, the slopes of his shape indistinguishable from the cabinet behind him.

“You haven’t promised,” Noah reminded him. His voice was distant. He closed his eyes.

“Alright, I promise,” Ronan said, “I’m not in the habit of freaking out over shit anyway.”

“That’s a lie if I ever heard one,” Noah said, smiling slightly.

“What is it, Noah?” Ronan asked again. Worry ate at his stomach like an acid.

Noah’s eyes snapped open and he smiled, Cheshire-sharp. Slowly, as if performing a magic trick for an adoring audience, he lifted a pale hand up, high, and passed it through the beams of moonlight which painted Ronan’s room.

Moonlight passed through Noah’s palms, uninterrupted. He cast the lightest of shadows across Ronan’s bed, as if he was a boy made of paper.

“You’re a dream creature,” Ronan breathed.

Noah let out a startled laugh. He set his hands back into his lap. Even at this late hour, he was still wearing his Aglionby uniform, the starched collar as sharp as a knife blade around his throat. At this angle, Ronan could see the smudge actually went deep into his face, like he was missing a chunk of his cheek.

“Did I Dream you?” Ronan asked.

“You’re a dreamer?” Noah blinked at him, “Like Kavinsky?”

Ronan was a dreamer like _Niall,_ not Kavinsky, but he said nothing, his jaw tight. It didn’t make much sense. Noah, like most of Ronan’s friends, had met and liked Gansey first, and then had acclimatised to Ronan. How could he, if he was Ronan’s all along?

“I’m not from your dreams, Ronan,” Noah said, expression sad, “but I guess I’m kind of a dream now.”

“Who’s dream?” Ronan asked, “Kavinsky’s?”

“Mine,” Noah closed his eyes, “I’m my own dream. I’m like a dream of myself, I suppose, a dream of my own memories.”

Ronan stared at him. Chainsaw chirped gently, tail flapping. “What does that mean, Noah?”

“I’m dead,” Noah said, simply.

Ronan only stared at him, blankly. The two thoughts wouldn’t connect. His brain kept throwing up errors, short circuiting when he tried to understand what Noah had said.

“You’re not dead,” Ronan said, and felt stupid even as he said it, “You can’t be. I’m looking right at you.”

Noah tilted his head, “Come on. You know the answer.”

The world was very still and dark. It was one of those Henrietta nights were the world seemed very tired of spinning and slowed, the world motionless and unchanging, the sky so dark and utterly colourless. On one of these nights, it was easy to imagine the universe as a place very cold, very black and almost empty.

“I’m dreaming,” Ronan wanted to be dreaming.

“Do your dreams look like this?” Noah asked.

Ronan chewed the inside of his cheek, eyebrows furrowed. How did Noah know what his dreams looked like? A heavy, empty space was opening up in him.

“You can’t be a ghost,” Ronan insisted, “Ghosts aren’t real.”

“You’re not real, then,” Noah said, “Psychics aren’t real.”

“How did you even die? When?” Ronan asked, voice pitching upwards.

“About seven years ago,” Noah said, “It was a ritual to wake the line. It didn’t work that time, but Adam seems to have figured it out now. I should ask him what Barry did wrong—I’ve always wondered.”

Ronan pressed his head into his hands, “This can’t be happening. Not tonight.”

“You’re getting dangerous close to freaking out, Ronan,” Noah reminded him, “And you did promise. We haven’t even gotten to the worst bit yet.”

“There’s worse?” Ronan asked, “Worse than you _being dead?”_

Noah pulled his lips into his mouth and raised both eyebrows.

“Damn,” Ronan glared at him, “What is it, then?”

“You really aren’t going to like it,” Noah said.

“Just tell me!”

Noah leaned back, startled by his voice.

Ronan rubbed his face, “I’m sorry. I—… I know this must be rough for you.”

Noah blinked at him. His eyes were catlike in the dark. Throughout the conversation, he had become so translucent that the moon glowed through his skull, the circle bisecting his face and glowing through one eye.

“Less than you might think,” Noah said, quietly.

For some reason, that broke Ronan’s heart. He swallowed thickly, watching Noah watch him. Chainsaw jumped from the side of Ronan’s bed and landed on Noah’s lap. Noah stroked her head with the back of his thumb. She squawked.

“Whatever you need,” Ronan said, finally, “Just tell me, and we’ll go get it.”

“I need you to move my body,” Noah said.

*

The BMW sliced through the night like a shark through the water.

It was now so late, that it was early again, too early for anyone to be using the roads. Ronan felt that itching, wide-eyed tiredness which usually set in as insomnia but now he thought that it might be panic. He kept his head low and his shoulders high. A thrum of nervous energy strung through him like a struck wire.

Bizarrely, he wished Kavinsky was there. On any other night like this he would be seeking the boy out, for some sort of pill or drink or race that would distract him. Failing that, he would pick a fight with Kavinsky, or Kavinsky would pick a fight with him, and he would have the thoughts forcibly knocked out of his head. Was that what Adam saw in him, too? That acidic laissez-faire attitude which eroded away any and all material worries? No, don’t think about that. Don’t think about Adam.

“Do you mind if I turn the radio on?” Noah asked.

Ronan glanced at him, bewildered. He had almost forgotten Noah was in the car. “Sure,” He said.

Noah flipped the radio on. Static filled the car and Chainsaw squawked, shuffling her wings together. She was sitting on top of Ronan’s chair, her claws hooked into the leather.

Weather, music, politics and then music again filled the car as Noah flipped randomly through the stations. Eventually, he settled on a slow jazz station and turned it low, so only the peaks of the saxophone were distinct above the rumble of the car.

“I have to say,” Noah said, “you are taking this a lot better than I expected you to.”

Ronan glanced at him. Noah had asked him not to freak out, but had he wanted him too anyway? Ronan thought if he told someone he was dead, he would want them to freak out, or at least be a bit upset, but his own expression was grim and blank. He felt a sharp lance of pain in his heart.

“It’s not hit me yet,” Ronan said, “This stuff with Adam, and when I talked to Kavinsky earlier—or yesterday, now—and now this with you. It’s not all sunk in.”

“Good,” Noah said, “I hope that will last until after you move my corpse.”

Ronan flinched, “Don’t say that.”

“What?”

“Corpse,” Ronan frowned, “It’s a terrible word.”

Noah tilted his head. Ronan could see the road slip past, through the edges of his translucent body. Noah said, “It doesn’t bother me.”

“How does this not bother you?” Ronan asked, “How are you not losing your mind over this?”

“I don’t know,” Noah leaned his head against the cool glass, “It just doesn’t upset me much anymore. I think, sometimes, when something really terrible happened to you a very long time ago, it’s difficult to lose your mind over it. It just becomes part of who you are. Even if it was awful.”

Ronan watched him. The car thrummed around them, and Henrietta flitted past. Fir trees, bulbous oak trees, rustling willows passed their windows. There were no streetlights this far from town, and it felt like they were cutting through a silent, black world.

“It’s a left here,” Noah gestured.

Ronan almost missed the turning, but he managed to slow the car down enough to slip inside the narrow track. Uneven earth bounced the car around, rattling the BMW as it rose up the hill. Ronan wondered what they would do if they got stranded out here. Wait till morning, probably, and hope he could work out where home was.

The radio lost signal and dropped into static. Neither of them reached to turn it off. Mud flecked the windows as they drove through a low puddle. Headlights illuminated the hedgerows in ghostly streaks, and Ronan could almost imagine them as legs, or arms, or bleached white bones.

“Here,” Noah said.

Ronan stopped the car and turned the engine off. Silence filled the car. The BMW sunk slightly, as if it was settling down to sleep.

“I didn’t bring any flashlights,” Ronan said.

Noah pulled two chunky torches out of the car door and shook them at him. Ronan accepted it and opened the car door.

“Wait,” Noah said, “There’s some tarpaulin in the back. To wrap me up in.”

Ronan swallowed. The enormity of what they were about to do hit him, and his knees went a little weak. He pulled the blue tarpaulin from the back and closed the car door after him.

The two of them crossed the hedgerow and began to climb up the rocky hill. Every few steps would dislodge rocks from the muddy ground, and they could hear them bouncing and tumbling down the hill after them. Ronan kept the tarpaulin close under one arm.

“Why now, Noah?” Ronan asked.

“I don’t know,” Noah said, “I’ve never felt it change this much. It’s like it used to be a little steady river and now it’s an ocean at storm. I don’t know what’s going on. It’s something about what Adam did, I think.”

Adam. Ronan had been trying not to think about Adam. He shook his head to clear it and continued to climb up the dark hill.

“Remember the route,” Noah said, “I’ve left a map of the ley line in your glove compartment. You can bury me anywhere on it, so long as I won’t be disturbed.”

“Where are you going?” Ronan asked.

“As soon as my body is removed, I’ll disappear,” Noah said, “it’s the only thing keeping me here, as a ghost.”

“You’ll come back?” Ronan said, pausing suddenly.

Noah walked a few more steps before he realised Ronan had stopped. He glanced back at him; torch pointed at the ground, shovel over one shoulder. Chainsaw fluttered past and landed on Noah’s head.

“You’ll come back, right?” Ronan said, “When I take your body out, you won’t—you aren’t going to move on, or something, right?”

Noah smiled, “I don’t think I _can_ move on, Ronan.”

Ronan watched him. He had an odd feeling of weightlessness, as if he were hanging suspended in the air. Distantly, he heard himself say: “Right.”

Noah led them on.

The world around them was dark. Leaves seemed to rear up out of nowhere and hit Ronan, and the grass ripped at his feet. He walked on.

“Here,” Noah said, and set the shovel down.

Ronan dug.

Quickly, he uncovered bones. The smashed plate of a shoulder blade. A chip of white, like a ceramic shard. The globe of a skull, broken under one eye.

“You don’t have to get all of me,” Noah said, “it’s alright if it’s not perfect.”

Ronan leaned heavily against a tree. His head was spinning.

“Just get the head and the big bones,” Noah said, “Try your best, but it’s not an exact science.”

“I’ll get everything,” Ronan said, desperately, “I promise. Even if it takes me days, I won’t leave anything behind.”

Noah tilted his head. His look was quiet and soft, as if he was receiving something precious. “Thank you.”

Ronan’s body was weak. When he touched the yellowed, porous bones, he began to shake. Smooth, pearl-like teeth brushed his hand as he pulled the skull from the earth. Noah disappeared. Very, very gently, he set the broken skull down on the laid-out tarpaulin. As gentle as if it were a baby bird, or a very delicate flower. As gentle as if it were still alive.

*

Ronan drove alone.

It was fully morning now. Blue sky sliced above them. Ronan had not rested properly for almost thirty hours. His body was shivering with energy, but his mind was blank and cavernous. A chunky tarpaulin bag was tied up and seat belted into the passenger side. He had tied and retied and tied it again. Ronan had several waking nightmares about losing a part of Noah in the car, only for Blue or Gansey or Adam to find it later and hold it up to the light to try and work out what it was.

He parked the BMW and stumbled out. He retched against one of the dilapidated walls, but nothing came out. Ronan sank to his knees. He pressed his head against the rough stone of the old church walls and began to pray.

When he was finished, he felt a little stronger. He retried the shovel and began to dig. His spent muscles shook.

Ronan dug a proper grave plot, 8 feet long by 2 and a half feet wide, which he measured with a tape he found in the back of the BMW, probably lifted from Adam’s. He wished he had a grave marker. He wished he was like Kavinsky, and he could just drop asleep and produce a beautiful, ornate headstone between moments. What use had Ronan’s aimless, volatile Dreaming ever been to anyone, really?

When he was finished, he lifted the tarpaulin bag from the passenger seat as one might lift a sleeping child.

He laid Noah out. All 206 bones lay before him, the two dozen ribs, the knife-blade sternum, the bowl-like hips. Two sets of fourteen phalanx bones (two in the thumb and three in each of the four fingers) which corresponded two hands. Tarsal bones chunky, blocky and strange looking. Femurs like dinosaur bones.

Each Ronan laid in the bed of mud. No coffin. No roses. He set every bone down very gently and tried not to think of the heavy earth which would soon hit the bones as he covered the grave, shaking them apart and breaking the delicate arches and curves.

When Noah’s bones rested in the mud, Ronan knelt down at the foot of the grave. He pressed his forehead into the cold mud.

Ronan had only been to one funeral. He had no communion to take, and no priest to bless the land. There were no gathered attendance. The church behind him had not been used for this purpose since before Ronan had been born. But there was no alternative to him, as impure and sacrilegious as Ronan Lynch was, and Noah deserved something.

It was a long time before Ronan could find something to say. His hands clasped together, and his voice was shaking and weak: “God of all mystery, whose ways are beyond understanding… lead us, who grieve at his untimely death, to a new and deeper faith in your love.”

The wind was cold. Mud soaked through Ronan’s knees. There was a pain in him, deep and inexorable.

“Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord,” Ronan croaked, “and let perpetual light shine upon him. Through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.”

“Amen,” Noah repeated.

Ronan lifted his head. It was only when he opened his eyes that he released he had started to cry. He wiped his face with the back of his hand. He dragged himself to his feet.

“Thank you,” Noah said, voice soft, “You really did get all of me. I can’t feel anything missing.”

Ronan didn’t think he could respond, even if he wanted to. He closed his shaking hands around the handle of the shovel and began to fill in the grave. He could only shovel a little in at a time, afraid of disturbing the bones too much. It was painful to see them bounce from the impact of the mud, as his inelegant shovelling disturbed them.

When the bones were fully covered, Ronan began to shovel properly. He didn’t know where he was drawing his strength from. It felt like if he ever stopped, he wouldn’t be able to start again.

“I took Blue up there, you know,” Noah sat on the BMW’s bonnet, his knees drawn up to his chest. Although his shoes looked muddy, he wasn’t leaving any marks, “To see my bones.”

“Hell of a first date,” Ronan muttered.

“I broke up with her, actually,” Noah said, sadly, “She’s a great girl. She deserves better than some lingering memory of a short, unremarkable life.”

Ronan wanted to object, he wanted to tell Noah that he was worth more than that. But what did Ronan know about being dead? He continued to shovel dirt. He wasn’t crying anymore; he was too tired. His back had started to flare pain, like an open wound across his lumbar spine.

“The ley line feels crazy,” Noah said, putting his foot on the ground as if he were testing the temperature, “If you’re a Dreamer, do you feel it? It’s, like, writhing.”

“No,” Ronan said. Dirt hit dirt.

“Well,” Noah lifted his foot back up, “I guess there are some upsides to being post-mortem.”

Ronan finished the grave. He dropped the shovel into the short grass as a wave of tiredness washed over him. He leaned against a nearby gravestone.

“Who killed you?” Ronan asked, “You said you were a sacrifice. Who did it?”

Noah watched him, “Barrington Whelk.”

Ronan stared at him.

“Barrington Whelk?” Ronan choked, “Our Latin teacher, Barrington Whelk? That Barrington Whelk?”

“Yeah,” Noah said, “It’s not a very common name.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Ronan asked, “He’s just—he’s just walking around and talking to us and giving us fucking homework! We could have gotten him jailed, or fired, or something, if you’d told us.”

“What should I have told you?” Noah asked, sadly. “I didn’t want to tell you I was dead. I never wanted anyone to know.”

“You could have made something up,” Ronan said, desperately.

“What?” Noah hung his head, “What should I have said?”

Ronan didn’t know. He tested his grip around the hard stone. “I’ll kill him, then.”

“Who are you, Kavinsky?” Noah smiled, faintly.

Ronan gritted his teeth.

“It wouldn’t work,” Noah said, “You wouldn’t get away with it.”

“And Kavinsky would?” Ronan growled.

“Probably. He might Dream up a bear or something and set it lose through Aglionby,” Noah seemed like he enjoyed the idea, briefly, “I wouldn’t ask you to do that. You’re not like Kavinsky.”

“I know,” Ronan said, “Kavinsky would be able to solve this.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure, Ro,” Noah said, leaning on his elbows, “and I think you’re doing just fine.”

“I wish there was something I could do to fix this,” Ronan said, “all this Dreaming and ley line shit and I can’t even help one of my best friends.”

Noah leaned back, across the hood of the BMW. He raised his head, so he could watch the clouds shift very far above them. The clouds were like long strings of white putty, thick but clumped into chains. Birds clustered across the tops of the trees, dancing and whirling through the air, completely weightless.

Ronan knelt and began to roll up the tarpaulin. Emptied, it rolled into a long, thin snake, which he tied to the shovel. He put them both back into the BMW.

“When I was alive, I…” Noah sighed, deeply, “I don’t know if you’ll believe it, but I was very energetic and bouncing. I had too much energy to be sitting in class, so I would carve my name onto the desks, or eat, or break things. I would interrupt people without meaning to and stop listening at random points. I don’t know what was wrong with me.”

Ronan leant against the side of the BMW and watched him. He breathed slowly.

“I couldn’t make friends,” Noah said, “I was bullied. I moved school a couple dozen times because it was so bad. It got to the point where I was bullied on the first day of moving. Before I’d even said anything. I don’t know how they knew. I guess they could smell it on me, that I was strange and difficult.”

There was a beat of silence. Ronan said nothing.

“When I got to Aglionby, Barry was the only one who would put up with me,” Noah said, looking at the floor, “I don’t think I even liked him much, but he was all I had. I was desperate not to lose him.”

Ronan straightened up, “Noah—”

“I’m not done,” Noah said, without looking at him.

Ronan bit the inside of his cheek. Noah raised his eyes to look at him. They shone, a little, with unshed tears.

“Maybe it’s a bit pathetic,” Noah sniffed, “to say I found actual friends only after I died. But I think I did. I, I… I really love you guys a lot, you know? Gansey, Blue, Adam and you. I really feel like I’ve found my people.”

Ronan engulfed him into a hug. He wrapped his arms around Noah as tightly as he could, even though his arms ached and Noah was cold, so cold. Noah sniffled against his shoulder.

“We all love you Noah,” Ronan murmured into the top of Noah’s head, “You know that, right? We all love you, a lot.”

“I know,” Noah’s voice was thick with emotion, “I never forget.”


End file.
